fucking good risotto, feeds two
I'm disturbed at how many of the recipes so far are "simple" and "shit". Here's a bloody awesome recipe that isn't actually hard but certainly takes some preparation. Is it worth it? I think so, but then I don't see "quick and simple" as inherently worthy goals when cooking.

Before you can start making your risotto, you have to cook and eat an entirely different meal a day or more before:

Roast a Chicken for the pair of you, have roast spuds, plenty of veggies - just cook it yourself, don't buy an already cooked chicken. Make sure you buy a chicken large enough that you'll only consume half of it.

Put your vegetable peelings in a large saucepan (3 litre capactity). Before you wash up, scrape all the meat and fat juices into the saucepan too.

Take the chicken carcass and remove all the chicken flesh (and only the flesh) into a bowl or container, and refrigerate. Into the large saucepan of peelings etc goes all the bones, skin, internal organs.

Boil up 1.7 litres of water in your kettle, pour into saucepan with bones etc. Bring saucepan to a vigorous boil, take down to a bare simmer and simmer for at least 2 hours, checking every now and then to make sure the heat is okay and to turn over the contents.

Once the water level has dropped a few inches, pour the contents of the saucepan through a colander into another saucepan. Throw the bones and crap away, leaving you with about a litre of beautiful golden chicken stock, entirely unlike the shit liquid you buy in a carton or dried brown flavoured salt you buy as a cube.

Let this cool, put it into a suitable container and refrigerate.

Next day, or day after, it's time to make some awesome chicken risotto.

Other than your 1 litre of beautiful stock and chicken meat (torn into small strips), you will need:

1 cup of risotto rice (about 180 grams).
1 cup of white wine (what about 180 grams of uncooked rice looks like) make it a good enough wine to serve the rest with dinner.
1 large onion
1 handful of mushrooms
trimmed green beans
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
fistful of fresh parsley - finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic
30 grams of butter
olive oil
salt
ground black pepper

1. Pour your stock into a small saucepan, warm it up and keep it warm (do not boil). Put in a few pinches of salt.
1. Chop up your onion and garlic.
2. Heat the butter and a decent glug of olive oil into a 3 litre saucepan. Once the butter has melted, chuck in the onion and garlic and cook for 3 minutes on a medium heat.
3. Stir in your risotto rice and cook for a further 5 minutes, stirring frequently (it'll get a bit sticky) until the rice has begun to colour.
4. Turn the heat down a bit. Ladle in 1 cup of your warm stock. This will bubble magnificently and quickly be absorbed/boil off.
5. Put in 1 cup of white wine, no more. This should not bubble magnificently, but still absorb fairly quickly - otherwise adjust your heat. Stir occasionally until the liquid is almost gone (the risotto will become stiffer and harder to stir - don't let it bubble too much or burn).
6. Once this has absorbed, chuck in your mushrooms and 1 cup of stock. Stir occasionally while the stock is absorbed.
7. As each cup of liquid is absorbed, put in another cup, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, in a seperate saucepan, cook your green beans.
8. When you are down to your last cup of stock, try some of the rice: it should not be gritty*. Put your chicken and final cup of stock in, and stir. Once this has begun to absorb, put in your parsley, grind in some black pepper.
9. Once the stock is absorbed, take the saucepan off the heat and stir in the parmesan cheese.
10. Serve, with green beans on the side.

*if your rice is still a bit gritty and you're almost out of stock, you're going to have to use your last cup of stock now. Unless you have a stash of beatuiful home-made stock in the freezer you can quickly defrost in a suacepan/microwave, any further liquid required will have to be plain boiled water 1 cup at a time. Do not use a stock cube with it. If you had 1 litre of stock to begin with and cooked 1 cup of risotto rice, this should not occur.

Tips: never, at any stage, be tempted to put more white wine in - it will totally dominate and ruin the flavour. If you don't see the point in parsley, try it anyway - it makes all the difference in this dish. Always use risotto rice. If when making your stock you forgot about it and the liquid almost simmered away, just boil a kettle and top it up again to 1 litre. Let it simmer for about 5/10 minutes and it should be absolutely fine.
( ferret -> twitter.com/syfyautocorrect <-, Sun 1 Jul 2012, 16:52, Reply)